AUGHEY, Captain Eden, Member, Australian Federation of Air Pilots [by video link]

DIAMOND, Mr Marcus, Safety and Technical Manager, Australian Federation of Air Pilots [by video link]

GRAY, Mr Lachlan, Safety and Technical Officer, Australian Federation of Air Pilots [by video link]

POLE, Captain Louise, President, Australian Federation of Air Pilots [by video link]

ACTING CHAIR: I welcome representatives from the Australian Federation of Air Pilots via videoconference. I invite you to make a brief opening statement before the committee asks questions. Do you wish to make an opening statement, Captain Pole?

Capt. Pole : Yes, thanks. I'm the elected President of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, the AFAP. I've held this position for nearly three years, and I was previously a vice-president for over 10 years. I'm employed as a regional airline pilot. The AFAP represents over 5,500 pilot members working in major and regional airlines, emergency and aeromedical services, helicopters, general aviation and firefighting. Services provided to our membership include industrial representation and negotiation; safety and technical expertise, including regulatory affairs at international and national levels; and welfare services, including access to the pre-eminent loss-of-licence insurance fund in Australia.

The AFAP believes that the path to the recovery of the aviation industry is directly linked to the vaccination of the Australian population. To this end, the AFAP executive has resolved that it supports COVID-19 vaccinations for any pilot who wishes to receive one and also supports initiatives by employers that encourage pilots to get vaccinated. However, it does not believe that it is the role of individual employers to decide whether or not to mandate vaccinations.

Our earlier input to this inquiry highlighted the critical role of aviation for the Australian community and economy—a critical role recognised in all of the existing aviation assistance support packages provided by government. As of now, up to 25 per cent of our pilot members are no longer current and are without recent experience that is required to maintain their licences. This aspect has been acknowledged in part by way of the provision of assistance to airlines to keep the skills and qualifications of their employed pilots current, such as through the Retaining Domestic Airline Capability and International Aviation Support programs. Unfortunately, this assistance only captured international pilots that remained employed. There were hundreds of international pilots that were made redundant at the start of the pandemic, and most have lost connection with the industry. These existing programs don't address the need for the many unemployed Australian pilots to regain and retain their skills and qualifications—skills which will be required when aviation service provision ramps back up. Furthermore, the AFAP reiterate that we do not believe that Australia has a need for skilled migration visas for foreign pilots, as there are substantial numbers of skilled and experienced pilots in Australia looking for flying jobs.

As in our earlier submission to this inquiry, the AFAP has proposed that there be a job-ready pilot program established and funded by the government. We have recently refined this proposal with specific tiers or levels of inclusions and progress, and we are able to expand on this here today. We intend to provide the details of the proposal in a subsequent submission to this committee.

With me today is AFAP staff member Marcus Diamond, manager of safety and technical, who is also an experienced commercial and airline pilot. Also accompanying me is AFAP member Captain Eden Aughey. Captain Aughey is accompanying me today as a representative pilot who has been significantly affected by the pandemic. Having been made redundant by Tiger Airways early in the pandemic, he has been unable to secure work as a pilot and has had to pursue other employment. He is an example of a pilot who has fallen out of the aviation industry who would benefit from a job-ready program. Once again, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear today before this committee.

ACTING CHAIR: Thank you very much.

Senator SHELDON: Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. I would like to cover some broad questions to start off with. Prior to COVID, as I understand it, there was an emerging shortage of pilots being considered across the world; is that correct?

Capt. Pole : Yes, there was. We believed in Australia at the time that there was what we called a pipeline blockage. In Australia we didn't have the shortage that was about to exist worldwide, but we believe we had a shortage of training facilities and support from the industry to get those new pilots into the airline industry. Marcus can give some figures in this area.

Mr Diamond : Before the pandemic we wrote some papers and submissions about the fact that there was a training pipeline blockage for pilots. At any one stage we've got 500 student pilot members that can be trained further on into the regionals, GA and the airlines. We didn't see it was an actual pilot shortage at the time—although now things are different, of course. When we look at the numbers on the CASA licences at the moment, even on the bare statistics on the number of airline transport licences there are nearly 1,000—about 800—ATPL licences that are no longer active; they've dropped off their list. So we are changing our narrative on pilot shortage. It's no longer, we think, going to be just the training shortage, although that will be part of it; we think in the resurgence of aviation there will be a substantial actual skills and pilot shortage.

Senator SHELDON: On the number of pilots—maybe you can give me some costs on this as well. You gave a percentage before. I wouldn't mind asking for the numbers again, just so I'm clear. What are the amounts that a typical pilot would need to pay for retraining and ongoing accreditation? I'm talking specifically about pilots that have been made redundant.

Mr Diamond : For them to maintain their licence and then their type currency, there are a number of different permutations to that. It's difficult to give you one cost but it would be anywhere from a low, smaller type of aircraft doing a command instrument rating or instrument proficiency check, which will be anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000, all the way up to if you were going to do an airline recurrency in a Boeing 737 or A320; that would cost $5,000 to $10,000, depending on how much training you required and whether you needed a complete revalidation or just a top-up of your annual. At the moment we've counted about 1,050 pilots that have dropped right out of their recurrency program and are into their second year, and they would almost need a further recurrency effort to bring them back up to their annual currency. I think Eden is an example of that.

ACTING CHAIR: Can I just clarify: are those fees to CASA, or are they fees to a private company or somebody who does the checking? Who are the fees going to?

Mr Diamond : The majority of the fees go towards the technology that's involved, whether it be an actual aircraft for the lower types or a simulator, which can cost thousands of dollars an hour to run. So that's where the bulk of the money goes, but there are definitely CASA fees for the licence checks and the check form itself and the processing of it. There are fees for the annual medicals. There's a CASA fee, of course, and then there's the fee to the doctor. That's before you even start, and then—you're right—there are the fees for the instructors and the check captains involved and, depending on where you're doing it, the simulator may have other training that's around like ground school. You probably pay much less for that, but you pay for the software to do the on-ground training for your aircraft type and that sort of thing.

Did you want to add anything to that, Eden, if you were looking at getting yourself recurrent, say, on the A320?

Capt. Aughey : There are the administration costs at first, which is checking your medical and CASA current. Then there's the study involved to participate in a program to get up to speed again, to be current to apply for an airline position. As Marcus said, that can range based on how long you've been out of the pilot seat, out of the industry, and also the technology of the aircraft. So that's where it varies a little bit. But, yes, that's correct. It's pretty much exactly what you said.

Senator SHELDON: For those who are previous members, and from your awareness of pilots who have left or are not working for airlines now—not on their books—what are some typical examples you could give me of incomes being received by people who have been made redundant or separated from their aviation operator?

Capt. Pole : If I may, I'll get Eden to answer that, if he's happy to reveal his own personal circumstances with this.

Capt. Aughey : Yes. I was made redundant in early April 2020, and due to my redundancy package I was unable to access any specific JobSeeker allowance. I wasn't eligible for JobKeeper because I didn't have a job. My particular path is that I was unemployed for around two months and then I went into warehousing, because that's what I did prior to my aviation career. I did that for around seven months. At the moment, I'm in the role of a trainee train driver in Sydney. We are currently training from home, which is a little difficult. It's a bit like trying to learn to fly a plane from home. I'm just trying to brush up on the theory. In terms of specific income, I'm on around a third of what I was on as an income-generating pilot. That's my path. There are quite a few pilots—or a couple of pilots—also working in the Sydney train industry due to the fact that it was a fairly common line of career path change due to the significant similarities in operating a train and operating a plane. Specifically on income, I'm on around a third of what I was on. That varies for everyone, obviously. I was a domestic jet captain, so I was on a relatively reasonable rate of pay, but it varies. People who can't make it back to the industry currently have gone into various different lines of employment.

Senator SHELDON: Thank you very much for that evidence, Captain Aughey. Captain Pole, regarding the capacity for people who are now unemployed or on substantially lower rates of pay, is it practical and possible for them to meet the costs themselves, or do you find that people are leaving the industry like Captain Aughey?

Capt. Pole : It is possible. It really depends on where they've come from, what their piloting job was and where they're trying to get back to. Some pilots—particularly, for example, the Virgin Australia international 777 captains who are no longer flying in that role—may have had income decreases up to around 50 per cent of their income. If one understands how people in general live up to their means, one can understand what it means to have such a reduction in your household, which is potentially only a single-income household. Many pilots' situations are like that, because of the nature of them being away from home so much that quite often their partner may not work full time or even work at all. So, when single-income families take a hit of potentially 50 per cent of what their lifestyle was dictating, you will find that they don't have the money to be able to invest back into attaining their licences. Once a pilot does get into a big organisation, or even a smaller organisation, as a commercial pilot, most of the costs are met by their employer. Things like your medical will come out of your pocket, but most of the other significant training costs and the time that's allocated to that training as paid time will be paid by an employer.

Senator SHELDON: Just following through on the final part of your evidence, the licensing fees are paid to CASA by the airline?

Capt. Pole : Not in all cases, but the licence fee itself—as in your medical being issued—is very minimal. It's under $100. That is not the expensive part of maintaining your qualifications. The expensive part is paying for the simulator, or the aircraft if you're in that part of the industry where the checks are done in the aircraft. They will all be in the thousands, and some are in the tens of thousands depending on how big the aircraft that you fly is.

Senator SHELDON: You have put a proposal called job-ready pilots to the department. Can you elaborate on what that is?

Capt. Pole : I will get Marcus to answer that. He has all of the statistics with him, and he can explain it.

Mr Diamond : It pretty much is as it sounds. It's for pilots who have fallen out. We did version 1 last year to try to convince the government to keep the skills of the cohort of pilots that are no longer working maintained so that they didn't degrade beyond a year. We can do, say, a quarterly recurrence for those pilots, which is a normal airline practice to keep a pilot in good skills maintenance. We've now refined that to where we see that we now have over 1,000 pilots that have dropped out of their annual currency, and there is a kind of tiered version we're working on or have worked on where depending on their lack of skill, if you like, we would feed them into a program to bring them up to a stage where they are again competent on the equipment that they were competent on before the pandemic. Does that make a lot of sense?

Senator SHELDON: That's very helpful. Thank you. You have given some evidence on this question, Ms Pole, and maybe you would like others to add to it as well: worldwide, there were shortages of pilots. If I understand correctly, there was a bottleneck within Australia. With pilots in various parts of the world not being accredited, I would have thought that those pilots who are accredited will be like hens' teeth and, as with all hens' teeth, it costs a lot more money to get people to do that work, so there's going to be almost be a seller's market in labour; I don't want to oversimplify it. If we aren't able to turn around and retrain, with ongoing accreditation and licensing of pilots, does that mean that we would find ourselves in a situation where pilots who are trained could and would be lured to overseas roles?

Capt. Pole : Yes, most definitely. We have seen that in other crises in the aviation industry through generations, where people have been unable to obtain work in Australia but they can get employment elsewhere. Pilots will travel all round the world to gain employment, and, as you said, if the market shifts significantly, the wages on offer will be very high in other parts of the world to try to attract people to, let's say, less desirable locations to live and work. They offer up these types of incentives for people to go. That will exacerbate our problem in Australia of not having current pilots to be able to work once the industry ramps up again.

Senator SHELDON: What are the major hurdles to overcome for this proposal regarding the job-ready pilot program to be implemented?

Mr Diamond : Approval to do it. Outside of an organisation that runs airlines, aside from where all of the money has currently gone, this wouldn't go internally to the corporates. This would be run for the individual pilots. Keep in mind the numbers here. We've heard today from your previous witnesses that there are hundreds of thousands of jobs involved in aviation and tourism or linked to them. I mentioned a number before: there are 6½ thousand ATPLs, airline transport pilot licences, out there, and we know only two-thirds of them are active or working. Some of them, like me, aren't flying at the moment or were before the pandemic. We're talking about only 5,000 people at the front of the aeroplanes who are qualified in Australia. If you look at that as a percentage of the employment workforce, if we let those people go—and we're looking at, right now, having 25 per cent of them leave—we've lost an enormous leverage of each individual skilled worker. That's really our point: let's keep these skilled workers current, or bring them back up to speed, so they can be drawn back into the industry when required early next year.

Senator SHELDON: So, if we could have Australians being trained as pilots, let alone being retained as pilots, that would give the Australian labour market a real opportunity to both work here and overseas, potentially?

Mr Diamond : Yes, absolutely.

Capt. Pole : I'd also add that, if the international borders open when projected to and then the state borders open, and the industry has the potential to recover quite quickly because people are eager to get moving again, the airlines won't be able to train people who are not current back into aircraft as quickly as they would like to. So what will happen is that the demand will return and the airlines will be keen to be able to assist with that demand, but they won't be able to train fast enough. We've already seen that in the initial recovery of the pandemic, where Qantas were a little bit behind in trying to catch up with the demand that came in. And that was those pilots who were still attached to the airline. Now, we're talking about the pilots who are actually unemployed at the moment and are not attached to a company. So they'll have to come in. As Eden is, they're in the position where they've been out of flying for over a year. It takes a lot longer for them to train, and the airlines will struggle to meet that demand just purely as to the availability of simulators and training staff and aircraft.

Senator SHELDON: We received evidence earlier today from the Australian Aviation Ground Handlers Industry Alliance, the Transport Workers Union and the Australian Services Union that planes may be grounded over the Christmas period and into next year because of outsourced ground staff being excluded from the RDAC support payments. Would that be concerning for your members as well?

Capt. Pole : We have a different issue. Ours is mainly driven by the fact that pilots can't stay engaged with their job and their role if they're not working in the industry, because they simply can't afford it. I don't think we're facing quite the same battle as the ground handlers will be.

Senator SHELDON: I was asking a more general question. If there are shortages of pilots, obviously there are consequences, which you've spoken about today, in your team. In the circumstances, if there are shortages of staff below the wing to carry out work, are you concerned that they're saying that that below the wing will impact pilots and others being re-employed above the wing?

Capt. Pole : Yes, and in fact it will. I totally agree with that. If there is not support for the aircraft to function and to support the crew that are operating on board the aircraft, then there is no work for the crew on board the aircraft. So, yes, very much so.

Senator SHELDON: Thanks for your time. I may have some more questions, if there's time.

ACTING CHAIR: We have five minutes to go. You've put forward quite a comprehensive discussion. I guess where we're at is a balance between costs incurred privately through check captains and access to equipment, as well as CASA charges. We've taken careful note of all of that. Can I ask you a broader question about vaccinations? You did touch on it at the beginning, but I haven't been asking all of the witnesses today about their views on how we move towards reopening and vaccination levels. Do you have any commentary to make around that that we could take on board, as far as vaccine passes go? We had discussion earlier today about which vaccines are going to be acceptable in different countries. Have you given any time to that, or is that something you'd rather leave to others to comment on?

Capt. Pole : Not as widely as that. I'll speak to you about the challenge that pilots who are actually working—and some that are not working—are having at the moment, which is being able to cross borders easily. Obviously, by the nature of flying, crossing a border is almost a daily occurrence. But it has got quite complicated with the requirements in each state—whether you are or aren't vaccinated, whether you can or can't go across and, when you do go across, whether you're going to get stuck there because the border requirements change while you're there. Pilots very much fear that happening to them and are reluctant to even go to simulator training in other states because they're concerned about that. The worst issue I've heard in the last few days is that of a pilot who, having been made redundant from work overseas and having returned to Australia as a permanent resident, had been offered a job in Western Australia and had not been granted an exemption to go to Western Australia to be able to take the role, so has had to turn the job down—having been unemployed for what I believe is nearly a year and having finally got employment, is unable to take the job. From the point of view of why we fully support vaccinations, it is because that's the best way that we can see the aviation industry moving forward and returning.

ACTING CHAIR: That is a particularly heartbreaking story—being offered a job and then not being able to take it up. I really appreciate the time the four of you have put into preparing for today and coming to provide this evidence. Do know that the committee has heard your stories and is well aware of just how distressing so many cases are. There are probably not enough words, are there? Right across Australia we hear of these terrible outcomes for individuals and families and, Captain Aughey, we know you're living it day to day. Thank you very much for your time. We really acknowledge all of that. Please go with the committee's thanks. Our thoughts are with you.

Senator SHELDON: Can I ask a very quick question? I know we're over time but I wanted to get this figure. I'm not sure they were able to give us the total amount of money you're seeking to get these pilots that are not working for aviation companies. What's the total amount of money that you're seeking?

Mr Diamond : For 1,000 pilots, depending on what tier levels we put them into, five to 10 million dollars a year will bring them up to currency and keep them current. If you look at the entire aviation package it's a minute amount.

Senator SHELDON: But a critical amount, you're quite right. Thanks for your indulgence, chair.

ACTING CHAIR: Thank you very much. Good afternoon.